Young players no longer have the same “hunger and need” to play football as
they once did, according to Roy Hodgson.

The England manager admitted previous generations of footballers had a greater desire to play, suggesting there were myriad more distractions in the modern game.

“I really don’t believe today you will find many top-class players who don’t have the hunger, passion and enthusiasm,” Hodgson said at the Soccerex Global Convention in Rio de Janeiro. "But we do have to accept we don’t have maybe players coming through with quite the same hunger and need to play football as was once the case.

“Football in England, I’m sure in Brazil, was a way out of poverty, that’s not quite the case any more.

“We don’t have people coming up from the mines, getting a game of football to save them from a life of coal mining.”

Discussing the pressures facing the modern footballer with Brazilian legend and Iraq manager, Zico, Hodgson said he had been impressed with the qualities shown by the England squad he inherited before the Euros.

But he said: “The young person today has so much on his plate. The competition to get him concentrating on being a footballer is much, much harder.”

Hodgson backed the new national training centre at St George’s Park to help improve grass-roots development.

“One of the things we need to think about in England more is the indoor arenas because if you’re indoors on a good surface, you’re quite prepared to spend longer,” he added.

“Our facilities are getting better. We must in the next 10 years take good advantage of this fantastic new training centre, St George’s Park, and make that work for us. We can be a lot better than we are.”